Bank Clients Just Dipped Their Toes Into Bitcoin ETFs, but Q4 Could See a FOMO Spike

The most recent batch of 13F reports filed by institutional investors was uneventful alongside bitcoin's price action during the third quarter.

Wealth management clients of top Wall Street banks continued to slowly accumulate bitcoin (BTC) in the third quarter via spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), according to the latest batch of 13F reports filed by institutional investors.

The filings showed that Goldman Sachs reported holding spot bitcoin ETF shares to the tune of $710 million in the quarter that ended Sept. 30, as clients' allocations into the ETFs nearly doubled, up from $418 million in the previous quarter. Most of the bank's shares were in BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), in which it held just shy of 13 million shares.

Other top-tier banks/wealth management operations, including Morgan Stanley, Cantor Fitzgerald, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of America, UBS and HSBC, didn't add to or subtract much from their positions. A new entrant was Australian investment bank Macquarie Group, which purchased 132,355 shares of IBIT, worth $4.8 million.

Wells Fargo, which has a very minor stake in the ETFs, held most of its shares in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust (BTC).

The positions were reported in 13F filings, a quarterly report that institutional investors with over $100 million in assets under management are required to file to disclose their holdings of certain securities. The deadline for the third quarter was Thursday.

BlackRock disclosed a stake of 2.54 million shares, worth $91.6 million as of Sept. 30, in its own fund.

The three-month period from the start of July to the end of September signaled a period of flat to downward price action for bitcoin, with the price largely ranging from $53,000 to $66,000. This followed the flat to downward price action during much of the second quarter, so it's possible the tepid institutional interest reflected the pall that sat over the market.

Things, of course, have changed in a big way in the fourth quarter amid the run-up to and following the election of crypto-friendly Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency. Bitcoin blasted out of its multi-month range, quickly taking out March's record of $73,700 and continuing this week to as high as $93,400.

The recent price action, combined with a hoped-for crypto embrace by the Trump administration taking office in January might inspire a good deal of "fear of missing out" (FOMO) in institutional players and their clients. It's at least somewhat possible the next batch of 13Fs coming after the start of 2025 could prove far more interesting than this quarter's.

"I expect a lot of scrambling behind the scenes to make sure institutions have at the bare minimum a 1% allocation due to crypto-friendly president Donald Trump and bitcoin breaking," said James Van Straten, senior analyst at CoinDesk.

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